


Wrong Question

by Flannigan



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Rookie!Abner, Unresolved Sexual Tension, conversation with the vampire much, that vampire and hunter good shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 15:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13766958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flannigan/pseuds/Flannigan
Summary: Abner is curious about the transformation that vampires go through, into a skeletal, uncontrollable and bloodthirsty beast. He hopes Finas will show him.





	Wrong Question

**Author's Note:**

> This was prompted to me over at my tumblr, www.it-s-blue-ink.tumblr.com, come say hi and drop me another

Abner massaged his shoulder, groaning at the pain that shot through the tight skin down over his chest. Across the small table, looking over two untouched glasses of water, Finas raised a brow.

“Your wound reopened.”

Abner gingerly felt through his shirt. The bandages were still secure over the wound.

“You can smell it?” he asked, receiving a small nod.

“What happened?”

Abner placed his arms on the table and leaned forward to speak in a lower voice. He didn’t want anyone in the café to overhear. Finas adjusted his position and leaned in, moving their glasses of water and coasters to the side. Sitting in the quietest and most secluded corner, heads close together they appeared to be sharing words meant for no one but the other. Abner looked down from the other man’s face and pulled on the fabric of his gloves as he spoke, noticing their hands were right by each other.

“I got clawed by a white vampire.”

“White vampire?” Finas asked, causing him to look up. “What do you mean by that?”

“They changed. Skeletal-like. Stronger and faster.”

“I see…”

“What do your kind call it?”

Finas was silent and leaned back, turned his head and looked over the room and the people present. If anyone entered who would recognize them… Abner stopped fidgeting and spent the moment looking at him. He caught the glint of the lights in his maroon eyes, the tint of his pale skin, the form of his profile, angle of the nose, his lips… He felt his pulse pick up.

He realized he’d been staring for a good moment when he noticed Finas had shifted his eyes to watch him from the corner of his eye. Abner cleared his throat and averted his gaze.

A silent moment passed between them as the vampire turned to him again and leaned forward on the table.

“It’s called many things. The monster within. A demon. Once I met someone who called it the ‘true vampire’,” Finas’ gentle and calm voice called Abner to turn towards him again. “It’s caused by suffering the loss of our humanity.”

Abner felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

“Humanity? I didn’t think you still had any.” Abner could have kicked himself when he heard himself speak. “What I mean, uh-” He didn’t scramble for words and try to explain himself when he talked with others, why did he feel that need with Finas? “Because you’re not… human.”

“I haven’t got any humanity?” Finas appeared faintly amused. At least not very offended. Abner supposed he’d had the time to grow a thick skin.

“You’re different,” he said.

“I am just like most other vampires, Abner. I, too, can loose my humanity.”

This was a complete foreign concept to him. How do you define something like humanity as something tangible that could be lost? A kind of humanity that non-humans possessed?

“How do you do it? Loose your humanity?”

“It requires a certain…” he searched for the right word, drawing lines with a finger on the condensation on his glass of water, “desperation.”

“Can you control it?”

“To some extent,” Finas said and angled his head to the side. He looked to prepare his own question.

“Can you show me?” Abner asked before he could speak, and at his words Finas pulled back in surprise. He felt his piercing eyes drill through him. It was amazing that despite how much Abner towered over him, he could be easily pinned in place by a single look.

“Excuse me?”

“Can you show me? I want to see how it- I could learn from it.”

Finas placed his hands in his lap and silently frowned. Had he asked for too much? Did he consider how much to reveal to him? Abner had to remind himself that they were technically enemies, and it had to be considered in every conversation, no matter the arrangement they had between them. Finas was still a vampire, and was bound to look after his own kind, just as Abner was dutybound as a hunter to his kind.

“It’s not that easy. For… _most_ of us, it’s instinctual and driven by strong feelings of rage and fear,” Finas explained lowly, causing Abner to move his chair forward and lean even closer.

“You said you could control it.”

“I can only try to reverse it, if the transformation isn’t complete. But it’s not really an option when cornered by a hunter,” Finas stated factually, “as you experienced when you got that wound on your shoulder.”

Abner thought over his words and leaned back in the chair, putting his hand on his shoulder once more. He had to clean it, do new stitches and redress it soon, or he’d get an infection.

“You’d be wise to wish you never have to face one of us fully transformed. There’s nothing left. Only bloodlust. Once it takes over, you either wake up with a full stomach, or not at all.”

“Then your companion…?” He knew the other vampire Finas travelled with often changed into a white vampire.

Finas raised his hand, palm facing him and averted his eyes. Right. Abner couldn’t ask about him. He let a moment pass for him to look sufficiently apologetic, then straightened up in the chair.

“Let’s change the subject.”

*****

His own knife pressed against his throat. He put all his powers into pushing away the attacking vampire, but the fight had already been too long, and his strength was nearly spent. The five other vampires stood around them, cheering as they rolled around on the wet pavement in a dark, empty park.

“Kill the hunter!” they cried.

The knife had been the only weapon Abner had on him when he ended his shift at the carshop. This was the difference between him and them - he’d been given a code of honour to hold himself up to, would never fight this unfairly. This is what made him above them, _better_ than them.

It’s also the thing that would make him more dead than them, if he didn’t remember the words to what spells he knew for emergencies like this. He kicked out at the frighteningly strong vampire ontop of him, but his efforts were useless.

The vampire on him smiled wide and laughed in his face, licking his razorsharp long fangs.

“Say goodnight-”

The vampire on him was torn away and the sharp edge against his throat disappeared. The cheering stopped. Abner looked to the side, pushing himself up with a hand clutching at his throat. The vampire who held his knife was on the ground, and a dark clad figure with back turned to Abner knelt next to him. The sound of metal piercing flesh, and the body disintegrated into dust. All this happened in just a few seconds.

The other vampires cried out at the newcomer in the circle, backing away at his sudden appearance.

Abner recognized it was Finas. Still heaving for air Abner couldn’t speak or ask questions before he heard a hissing and crackle and saw smoke and billowing wisps tearing from his head. His arms turned skeletal and fingers shifted into long claws.

Finas looked down at him with only one normal eye remaining, mouth filled with long teeth and two longer fangs. It made Abner shiver and want to run.

Finas the white vampire, or demon or what to call it was swarmed by the others, dragged away while striking out, loosing his footing. Others started to give off smoke too, loosing their humanity. Abner’s hand curled around the handle of his knife in the pile of ashes. He stood up, taking steps backwards, unable to look away. The fights between vampire hunter and vampire were nothing compared to how vampires fought between themselves.

Brutal. It was feral. Animal.

They charged Finas, held him down and kicked and bit, voices turning into snarling growls. Without a cry Finas pushed them off of himself for just a second, found his foothold, took their slashes and strikes head on and rammed into one of them. He went flying back, and Finas pounced them into the dirt. He sank his claws repeatedly into his chest until the body dissolved into dust. With a low purring growl he looked over his shoulder at the others. They were made quick work of. The last one he put his hands around their head and severed their neck, tearing it off with a twist and snap.

Then Finas looked at Abner. Abner’s arm went up, pointing the tip of the blade towards him, not sure whether to run or stay.

He mumbled words under his breath, ready to infuse a spell into his knife. Finas looked away, remained on his knees, gripping his own head over a pile of ashes when the sizzling and crackles were heard. Thin threads of smoke trailed from his body. Once they stopped, Finas got to his feet and slowly walked towards him. The white skeletal armour, the horrifying mask was gone. He stopped in front of Abner, expression resigned and muted like at the café.

Abner lowered his knife.

“Finas, you-”

“We should leave this area,” Finas interrupted and walked past him. Abner followed him down a path, seeing Finas start to stumble and limp the more they walked. The path opened up to a secluded little area with a park bench, which Finas sank down on with a groan and put a hand on his leg.

Abner sat down next to him, inserting the knife into the sheath in his boot. A silent moment passed where too many questions and thoughts weighed heavy on his mind. So he started with the simple ones.

“You were a white vampire. Lost your humanity,” Abner stated. Finas nodded and leaned back on the bench, against Abner’s shoulder and turned his face up to the sky. Abner breathed silently, fully aware how close their knees were to knocking together. Finas was just tired and injured, he understood that.

Abner turned his face to him. He had to understand how it worked. He could use the knowledge to aid him in his hunts. 

“How did you do it? How did you control it?”

“That’s the wrong question, Abner,” Finas said with a shake of his head.

Abner waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. He’s just silent. Maybe it’s something he doesn’t want to let him know? After all, he’s a hunter, and Finas is a vampire and… and had just killed half a dozen of his own kind. It made no sense! It went against everything Abner had been told.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, confusion dawning on him, “Why kill your own kind to save me?”

Finas shot him a look.

“Why, indeed. There’s a question worth asking.”

Abner waits for him to continue, and a chilly wind picks up around them. Finas gives him a look he hasn’t seen before, dishevelled hair ruffled just so by the wind. The low light and shadows cast by the lamppost surrounded them in a strange atmosphere. It’s bewitching and he can’t help but stare. He knows Finas know he’s staring as the silence drags on, but he doesn’t care. 

A brown eyebrow rise slightly and there’s a hint of a curved lip. His breath catches in his throat when he feels the weight of a hand on his thigh. Abner doesn’t, can’t, look away from him as it tightens its grip, a thumb brushing over the outside of his leg. Finas holds his gaze for another moment, then he stands up and dusts himself off.

“I’ll see you tomorrow night?” he looks down at him.

Abner nods, his voice hiding somewhere he can’t find it.

Finas walked down the path with a slight limp, and when he was out of sight Abner spotted a bat flapping away in the sky.


End file.
